Main Street of the Arts; Downtown Park to Be Site of Sculpture Walk, Inspired by Public Exhibits in Other Cities

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Byline: Charlie Patton

Next weekend Main Street will be transformed into an arts venue.

For the next year, 10 sculptures will fill the park, located across Main Street from the downtown public library. The sculptures will be there because Jenny Hager, who teaches sculpture at the University of North Florida, wanted to create the sort of public art display in Jacksonville that she has seen in New Orleans and Knoxville, Tenn.

Hager was one of four artists who received a Spark Grant in 2013 from the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville to do a creative project in the downtown Spark District, which is bordered by Hogan, Duval and Liberty streets and by the St. Johns River.

Three of those projects launched in October. But Hager planned all along to wait until this summer to launch her project. She issued a call for artists to submit designs last spring. Then Brooklyn-based sculptor Marsha Pels, whom Hager met at an International Sculpture Conference during Art Basel in Miami, served as the exhibit's juror, reviewing 25 designs and picking 13 of them. What Hager is calling Sculpture Walk is modeled on the Art in Public Places program that is part of the annual Dogwood Arts Festival, which places outdoor sculpture in Knoxville's parks each spring.

"It brings an incredible amount of energy to the town," Hager said.

Hager initially planned to bring 10 sculptures to Jacksonville for display in Main Street Park, where the sculptures will be joined by a bench created by Hager and bike racks created by Hager's husband, D. Lance Vickery, who also teaches sculpture at UNF, and by her UNF intern, David Main.

But Preston Haskell told her he would help her add three more sculptures to the project. Those three will be on display outside Regions Bank, outside the JAX Chamber and in Hemming Plaza.

"I'm a collector of outdoor sculpture," said Haskell, one of Jacksonville's foremost supporters of the arts. "When I visit cities like Denver, Philadelphia and Cleveland that have public sculpture, I'm struck by what a difference it can make in the fabric of a downtown."

For creating their work, the participating sculptors get a $1,000 stipend. …